Currently we are hiring teachers for April.
Last year we had 2 teachers not show up to start the school year. We had to scramble to hire new ones to replace them.
1 because his wife did not want to move with him.
The other one found a job in Tokyo and preferred living there.
How do we hire teachers in January and ensure that they start at the end of March?
Update: Currently we are in the final week of interviews. I posted this not to find new staff but to ensure that the staff we did hire would show up on their first day.
Having read each comment and follow your advice we are going to change the following things.
1. 6 weeks of prep instead of 2.
2. ID must be sent with signed contract.
We already offer decent pay.
A place to stay during the prep time while you find your own place.
Permanent contracts after first year.
Health and pension.
Flexible schedule with seniority.
Teachers get to pick what they want to teach within the curriculum.
Update 2: We do visa sponsorship.
Families are welcomed to join. We already have couples that both spouses work for us.
45 comments
Offer more money?
I don’t think you’ll get a ton of positive feedback – I’ve undergone similar challenges.
The bigger question, is how do you make a job that everyone hates more attractive?
Your most qualified candidates are the most embittered, angry older men who remember the English teaching salaries of the 80’s and 90’s.
But your least qualified candidates are applying for the same reason – they are desperate for a visa and / or they have no other options for employment in Japan.
If you’re a small business owner – what is it about your company specifically that doesn’t make people want to burn you at the first opportunity?
What are you doing that’s different from all the other last resort English teaching jobs here?
Hopefully, you offer employees pension, health insurance, and transportation. If that’s in order, offer a good salary.
You say your school isn’t in Tokyo, idk where it is but maybe help them realize some benefits of living where you are, or if they’re moving from another area, offer to help them relocate, pay moving costs or something idk
Get them to move and start paying them before March once they have moved
Like pay them fairly and don’t screw them over?
Aside from the obvious – better salary and benefits (health, pension, transportation), having an earlier start date (eg: 4 to 6 weeks before the new school year) would give you that much “response time” should the candidate decide to bail on you.
Yes, you would have to pay them for it, but it shouldn’t be too hard to make use of them. Have them observe and/or start teaching the current classes, as well make lesson plans and prepare for the next school year. It would also allow them to settle in if they need to move from outside of the area.
They might not be able to do so, if they are teaching somewhere else, but it could be a possible option to look into.
As it would be their first contract with you, you should be legally able to define a longer notice period as well (eg: 2 months), that *might* help you a little bit, but it could be hard to enforce if the candidate really decides to bail with shorter/no notice.
Bottom line might really be, have a better interview process that eliminates such people, so they don’t become a problem for you. The fact that there were two might indicate an issue with the interview process last year.
Job security could also go a long way. Offer to hire for permanent/seishain positions instead, and/or a clear path to such a position within a reasonable time frame (1-2 years) could make a huge difference as well.
Get some back ups in case the first choices quit.
eikaiwas use foreigners to cut cost by not offering bonuses, tiny pay rises, no sales incentives, no promotions or career advancements. we are expendable to you which you exploit. not be surprised if we suddenly disappear and make your lives harder. hire from africa or deep south east asia, im sure you don’t even have to pay them and you’d think they’ll be happy just to be in japan
Higher salaries and better benefits
I’d be willing to come and work. DM me.
I can start ASAP. Seriously interested.
Offer a salary above what others pay, company health insurance and pension, decent vacation time per year and a nice work schedule.
I’d also recommend asking people that are quitting why they are. Some won’t want to say but some will, so over time you may get useful information on things to improve on.
Are you paying a salary that makes living (likely) in the inaka (or deep inaka) worth it?
Are you paying for shakai hoken and not trying to get your teachers on kokumin?
Are you offering a good work-life balance?
If not, those are a good starting point.
I mean, you’re in the Eikawa business. You’re not going to get “winners” in this line of work. It comes with the territory. (Like fast food)
However, moving is expensive in Japan and people often get cold feet due to cost
One way to mitigate this is to pay for “relocation”
Basically, you can pay for moving fees, key money/deposit and first month of rent. Of course, you shouldn’t pay all of it upfront, but divide it out over 3-6 months into their contracts.
You can’t. This is part and parcel of doing business. I’d only suggest that you interview carefully, and have a backup plan. Alternatively, only hire among teachers who are already living in your area.
Whereabouts
Agree that you need to be better than others. Better salary, pay shakai hoken and nenkin, pay raises, bonuses, visa sponsorship, housing and/or relocation assistance, a path to seishain etc.
– are you giving them all the documents they need before hand? Contracts, visa support, benefits, etc?
– how is the salary?
– is there relocation involved? Do they get housing support or relocation fees?
Outside of that, there isn’t much you can do except make your establishment more appealing than the other ones. Sometimes people just pass on opportunities for better or less paying but more convenient ones. You can’t really control that. But if this is a frequent problem, maybe check your procedures and your offer and see what is different between you and the competitors.
I’m willing to bet they won’t take any advice offered
I don’t know the job or conditions but you have three paths.
Hire early to have access to the more competitive candidates. They will be getting many offers so yours needs to be better.
Hire in February and/or March and get the left over teachers. The chance of them switching to another company at this point is low.
Hire from abroad which is a hassle and they might freakout and go back to their country in 1 day, 1 week or 1 month. They probably won’t choose another job before starting though.
Create better working conditions to include pay and work/life balance in an effort to increase your school’s reputation as a desireable employer.
Where are you?
More money.
The best eikaiwa pay 27 a month or 3.25 million yen a year. Today that is about $25,000 US. In the US, three states have a minimum wage of $15/hr, many more discussing it and even the government thinking about it. $15/hr is $31,000 a year. That means minimum wage jobs in the US pay more than the best eikaiwa in the industry. $6,000 a year or $500 a month more.
Canada’s minimum wage is now equal to what AEON pays.
Australians would make about $10k Aussie dollars less than minimum wage at home.
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Less and less people are going to want to move here for these jobs now. Only the gap year rich kids and people with more questionable reasons for wanting to come to Japan will apply once they see the pay.
Clearly the only answer is take their passports at the interview!
Employees hold out for better offers right up until a start date so something came along that suited them more. It isn’t always what they tell you.
They were most likely offered better pay, insurance, moving expenses, transport etc. Or maybe the hours were better. As a recruiter it might be better to research and look at what other schools are offering.
Also with the visa hands down no visa support then no native speaker. Not everyone is a PR or married.
Edit: for example if teaching positions come up in the middle of nowhere in Shikoku they’re nearly always offering absolutely everything and more because they have to try draw people out there. Housing, car etc.
Eikawas are mostly dead-end jobs that serve as a temporary gig until something better comes up, so no surprise if somebody just up and leaves.
If you pay me around the 350.000 a month mark, I’ll work for you.
It’s not a crazy salary I’m asking, is it?
It’s always a salary issue. Offer salary higher than the median.
If only there was something that a company could do, to attract employees and not have them no show because they found something better….hmmm….I guess it will be a mystery forever.
Pay them properly, visa sponsorshio and actually give them shakai hoken.
Make the job more attractive. How much do you pay? Do you offer insurance and pension? Is it full time employee or just a series of short-term contracts.
Like everyone has started, sounds like your salary and benefits suck. Haven’t seen you respond to prove that wrong, so look in the mirror. You get what you pay for. There are plenty of good teachers in Japan, if you aren’t willing to pay for them, you get the leftover crap
> How do we hire teachers in January and ensure that they start at the end of March?
1. Pay a better monthly salary. What are you paying now, 220,000? 250,000? Bump it to 300,000 and then offer increases with experience up to 350,000.
2. Improve the working environment so people will want to stay longer. How about a 4 day work week? Having 3 days weekends would entice a lot of people to stay a few more years.
3. Improve your benefit offerings. Shakai hokken + nenkin, a yearly bonus, better holidays. Sick leave. Close the school over holiday periods like Golden Week, Obon, and New Years.
4. Be a decent human being and a good boss to work for.
Some of these independent eikaiwa owners are comedy gold. They cherry pick the slender OLs and dump the snaggled-tooth harridans on everyone else’s schedule.
Offer a more attractive job = money.
Pay more. What salary do you offer?
Have you tried offering a full-time position with benefits, or is it the zero-PTO, no shakai hoken, salary of ¥200,000 or less kind of position?
If it’s the latter, then you know your answer.
If you live in inaka, As an experienced teacher, I wouldnt take less than 350,000 yen a month.
you’re getting lots of responses telling you to do basic things as a business owner and they’re all missing the point.
the sooner you get them involved in meeting other teachers and students the better. the more coworkers they meet, the greater the embarrassment and shame from disappearing on you. it is my opinion that this kind of manipulation is necessary in business management, especially considering the demographic.
Pay more money. You want quality workers, pay them more. And treat them better when they work there so you don’t have to replace them every year.
It’s insane to me how managers will say “I CAN’T FIND ANY DECENT WORKERS!!” yet will pay them the bare minimum and then ask them to work after hours and treat them like slaves.
Seriously, pay your teachers a better wage. That’s how you solve your problem.
What educators want and are fighting for pretty much everywhere:
Decent treatment
Better benefits
Better pay
I’ll come teach.
As someone who has hired many people before, here’s my two cents.
Seems that the issues you experienced before could be solved by screening for this in the interview stage.
For example, if the person is planning to take a partner/ family member with them, ask if they have discussed the role with their spouse or family and how their spouse/ partner/ family feels about the move or potential relocation.
For the second, you can ask candidates which other roles they’ve applied for and also ask which areas of Japan they would most like to work in. You could probably deduce from these two questions whether they would be more likely to take another job if they were offered one.
They may lie in some cases so your interviewers may need a bit of EQ and body language skills to determine what’s true and what’s false. They should have these skills already, especially if they’ve been interviewing for a long time.
It’s not really specific to teaching. It happens. Maybe not as often in Japan but google “employees ghosting employers” or something like that.
In your case, it could just be bad luck.
The best you can do is: a) sell yourselves for your particular advantages, b) sell the area -assuming you are in the inaka c) keep in touch with them throughout the process until they are onboarded d) if you can, you might want to hire a p/t teacher or make a connection with someone that wants to make occasional extra money filling in until you have stable staffing again.
Also…don’t want to beat you up on this, but pay a bit more than other places. Doesn’t have to be a bank breaker just enough to make someone go, “you know the money is a bit better here and they probably treat teachers a bit better”.
That sounds like a great plan! It’s always a good idea to give teachers plenty of time to get settled in and make sure they’re comfortable with the move. Offering visa sponsorship, health benefits, and flexible scheduling are all great incentives for potential teachers too. Good luck with the rest of your hiring process!